Wikipedia:Tip of the day/October
If you would like to display the Wikipedia tip of the day on your User page, here is how:
Edit your User page and insert one or more of the following bolded strings (including the four curly braces), preview your edit, and when it looks right, save it.
To see a visual display of the below templates check out the Tip of the Day Display template gallery.
- {{totd}} – the main userspace version of the tip of the day template, with border, centered in the middle of the page. Complete with inspirational light bulb. Border color can be custom modified.
- {{totd b}} – a more compact version of the above template. Useful for columns.
- {{totd3}} – a purple box version, useful for displaying the tip in columns.
- {{totd-random}} – this is the tip of the moment template, which automatically displays a different tip every time you enter a page it is on. If it doesn't update, try clearing your browser cache.
- {{totd-tomorrow}} – this shows tomorrow's tip, and is used by Wikipedia tipsters to make sure that the tips are up-to-date and corrected before they go live.
- {{tip of the day}} – the borderless version, with light bulb.
- {{tip of the day with h3 heading}} – the tip in heading/paragraph format (No light bulb).
- {{totd2}} – the borderless version used on Wikipedia's Help page (which already has its own borders). (No light bulb).
- {{totd CP}} – like the help page version, but with a box and light bulb. Spans the whole field (screen or column) that it is in.
- {{totd-static}} – like the totd version but the date is static. You have to manually change the date. Good for testing purposes.
Wikipedia and its sister projects are organized at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikimedia-wide issues can be discussed either on Wikipedia Meta or on the Wikimedia-l mailing list. If you ever want to bring an issue to the attention of the entire Wikimedia community, the foundation list is the best medium for doing so. But please use project-specific mailing lists for issues which concern just one project. You do not have to subscribe to keep up with the mailing list's postings—they are archived here.
Another source for what is happening is Goings on, which provides a weekly digest. On Wikipedia, to keep up with current events, visit the Wikipedia:Community portal.
Editcountitis, obsessive edit-counting disorder (OECD), is the mistaken belief that a Wikipedian's overall contribution level can be measured solely by their edit count. This is a phenomenon which some think may be harmful to processes such as requests for adminship, as well as to the Wikipedia community in itself.
The problems with using edit counts to measure relative level of experience are that it does not take into account a user's edit history prior to registering an account (posting anonymously), and that major and minor edits are counted equally, regardless of whether the edit is a typo fix or the creation of a full article. And edit counts give no consideration to the quality of the edits made.
Try to avoid using trademarks whenever possible. When trademarks do need to be used, remember to follow standard English text formatting and Wikipedia Method of Style (MOS) capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment. Do not use special symbols such as TM and ® unless they are important to the context, such as to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs. Product logos and corporate logos may be used once in the infobox or corner of articles about the related product, service, company, or entity. Be sure to use a low-resolution version of the logo to comply with copyright requirements for fair-use.
You can make Google search Wikipedia by adding this to your Google search: site:en.wikipedia.org.
Examples:
yellow bellied sapsucker site:en.wikipedia.org
"george mason" site:en.wikipedia.org
Help:Searching
It is proper "Wikiquette" (WI-kee-ket) to sign your messages on talk pages. This prevents readers from confusing your posts with messages by other users.
To sign a message, move the cursor to the end of the message, and then with your mouse click on
the signature icon (
) in the toolbar at the top of the edit box.
This inserts the signature code (~~~~) where the cursor is.
When you save the page, these tilde characters are converted to your signature followed by a date stamp.
You can also type this code in manually with the four tilde characters ~+~+~+~.
- To sign without a date stamp, use three tildes ~~~ ~+~+~ instead.
- To sign only the date stamp, use five tildes ~~~~~ ~+~+~+~+~.
Many different things on Wikipedia can be simplified, automated, or customized with user scripts. For example, you can create scripts to automate different vandalism warnings, perform an AfD nomination, or display the current time in a place of your choosing.
Many scripts have been written by Wikipedians, and are ready for you to make use of. To enable these pre-made scripts, simply paste them into your common.js file (a user's common.js is loaded regardless of which skin they are using). You may have to the page before the script will load for the first time.
Internal links (AKA Wikilinks) are a great way to alert users to pertinent information. However, remember that excessive linking can detract from an article. Only create links that are relevant to the context of the article.
Internal links are created by placing double brackets around the word you wish to link, for example: [[Subject X]]. You can link to a specific section by adding the # sign and the name of the section after the article name. For example: [[Subject X#The beginning]].
A good photograph, map, or other graphic in an article can help clarify things. If you want one but are stumped, or totally lost about copyright rules, one really good way to find graphics is to type "public domain" into the Google image search window, along with an appropriate key word. An extra benefit is that you have a high probability of finding photographs that are legal under the Wikipedia rules. (Remember to copy down the artist's name and URL for recent photographs labeled "public domain", because you will need the information when you upload the graphic.)
Of course, you shouldn't forget to look on the Wikimedia Commons first—someone may already have done the hard work! (You can use images from the Commons in the same way as local Wikipedia ones.) Here is the link to Wikimedia Commons search.
Wikipedia has many places to ask questions, such as the:
- Help desk
- Teahouse, a friendly place which aims to assist new editors
- Reference desks
- Village Pump (technical) forum
- The talk page for each and every article in Wikipedia
- Putting the
{{help me}}template in a message on your Talk page (including the 4 curly braces)
Sometimes, a user will post a question and forget all about it. It is easy to forget about these unless you keep a record of the questions you posted to refer back to later. One useful method for doing this is to set aside a section of your User page or Talk page, to keep a list of links to your queries. In this list, you can place section links which lead directly to the subheadings (AKA sections) under which you posted your queries.
Including the contents of one page ("the template") into a host page is called transclusion. This allows the host page to automatically be updated whenever the template page is updated. It is accomplished on Wikipedia by surrounding the name of the page from which the contents are being transcluded with two pairs of curly brackets and leaving out the "Template:" prefix. In addition, pages in the following namespaces can also be transcluded: Category:, Help:, Portal:, User:, and Wikipedia:. The only difference is that you must include the prefix (followed by a colon) with the page's name inside the double curly brackets. Images can also be transcluded, but this is done using double square brackets instead of curly ones. Here are some examples of templates that will transclude if you paste them, save them, and then refresh or the page:
{{Pic of the day}} · {{Tip of the day}} · {{Help:Contents}} · [[File:Wikipedia-logo.png]]
Lists on Wikipedia have three main purposes:
Information:
- Lists are a valuable presentation format, especially the structured list. Examples include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, glossarized, or annotated.
Navigation:
- If a user is browsing without a specific research goal in mind, they would likely use the See also lists embedded in articles. If the user has some general idea of what they are looking for but does not know the specific terminology, the general topics lists (outlines and indices) would be most useful.
Development:
- Outlines and indices give an indication of the state of the 'pedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written (shown by red links).
Like categories, lists are great for keeping track of changes to subject areas, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike categories, lists are centralized, providing direct control over the contents. Lists also allow detection of deletion of pages from them (the list item will "red link"). Another advantage of a list is that changes can be tracked in the page's history, while changes to categories cannot.
Firefox, a popular web browser, has a search engine selector, which is the pull-down menu on the left of the search box (in the top-right corner of Firefox's window; click on the little down-arrow to reveal the search engine choices). Wikipedia is one of the choices provided.
Many of the pages in the Wikipedia namespace have specialized redirects called "shortcuts" that can be entered into the search box. Most shortcuts start with WP: followed by a capitalized abbreviation of the page name. Some common shortcuts are: WP:HELP, WP:WELCOME, WP:IMAGE, WP:5P, and of course, WP:TIP. A semi-complete list of shortcuts is available at WP:CUTS.
A shortcut can be used in the search box or in a link.
To jump to the talk page of a page with a shortcut, start with "WT:" instead of "WP:".
When you activate this nifty wikitool, it empowers your mouse arrow.
When you hover the mouse arrow over a link, a preview of the article or image "pops up", so you don't actually have to go to that page to see it. If the article doesn't preview, you can activate it from the popups menu provided in the popup box (just hover the mouse over the word "popups" and then select "enable previews").
Another popup menu provided is "actions". When you select one, it applies that action to the page specified in the link you are hovering over. Actions include "edit", "diff my edit", "move page", what links here", and many more.
And you can get popups within your popups (by hovering over links in the preview)!
To activate Navigation Popups, click on the gadget tab of Preferences and check the Navigation popups box. In order to activate and use Navigation Popups, you must be logged on.
AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automatic page loader and editor designed for working on large batches of Wikipedia pages. One of its tools, the database scanner, lets you do exhaustive searches of the encyclopedia's content. It can search article titles and article contents. The tool supports regex, so you have unlimited possibilities for search criteria.
The tool works off-line, directly on a copy of the Wikipedia database that you have downloaded.
It will find absolutely every occurrence of an entered search string, and return the names of all the articles that it comes across that contain it. Unfortunately, it only presents a maximum of 30,000 page names, at which point it will stop. So, the more specific the search criteria, the better.
For on-the-fly general discussion and support requests for AWB, try the AWB IRC channel: #AutoWikiBrowser connect
Six essential tips:
- Starting an article
- How to add an article to a category
- Please sign your name on talk pages
- Edit summary reminder setting
- Moving pages
- Redirects
Half-a-dozen power tips:
- Create links faster with link tricks
- Power-editing with AutoWikiBrowser
- Navigate faster using Wikipedia shortcuts
- Wikipedia industrial-powered search
- Work faster using keyboard shortcuts
- Install your first javascript (Watchlist Sorter).
If you know even better tips than these, drop on by the Tip of the day project and show off a little. Strut your wikistuff!
Contribute to Wikipedia by translating content. WikiProject Intertranswiki is a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia by importing and translating content from foreign language Wikipedias into the English Wikipedia. See the category WikiProject Intertranswiki for the list of languages. Use your multilingual skills to help improve Wikipedia.
All of Wikipedia's official policies and guidelines are based on five pillars that define Wikipedia's character:
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Special:MyPage is a special link that is dynamically linked to the current user's userpage. So, whoever clicks on it will be taken to their own user page.
If you add a subpage to the link, then only you will be taken to your subpage of that name. Other users will be taken to the subpage of that name in their namespace (if it exists).
This makes the link "private" by only letting the correct user get to the page via that link. Other users will diverted to their own userspace.
The code [[Special:MyPage/To-do list|To-do list]] creates this: To-do list.
However, this only makes the link private, not the page itself. Others can still get to it via the search box or by creating a new link with its entire title.
When this setting is activated, double-clicking anywhere on a page does the same thing as clicking on the edit this page tab. This only works with browsers that support Javascript (but all of the latest versions of all of the major browsers do).
To enable this feature click the Preferences link at the top of any page. Then click the Editing tab. Then check the box next to Edit pages on double click. And finally, click the Save button.
Note: After saving, you have to clear your browser's cache to see the changes. Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), IE: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5.
One of the five pillars that form the foundation for all Wikipedia policies and guidelines is Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. In a nutshell, this means all Wikipedia articles must be written from a detached standpoint, representing views fairly and without bias. This includes all the types of pages in the encyclopedia (articles, maps, reader-facing templates, categories, and portals, etc.).
The encyclopedia proper is the main namespace and contains all of Wikipedia's encyclopedia articles. All of the other namespaces have prefixes, which must be included (followed by a colon) at the beginning of links to pages in those namespaces in order for those links to work. Otherwise, the links will point to the main namespace, which has no prefix.
Currently, Wikipedia has 30 namespaces: 14 subject namespaces, 14 corresponding talk namespaces, and 2 virtual namespaces.
The namespaces (by prefix) are:
- Main/Article (no prefix), Talk:
- User:, User talk:
- Wikipedia:, Wikipedia talk:
- File:, File talk:
- MediaWiki:, MediaWiki talk:
- Template:, Template talk:
- Help:, Help talk:
- Category:, Category talk:
- Portal:, Portal talk:
- Book:, Book talk:
- Draft:, Draft talk:
- Education Program:, Education Program talk:
- Timedtext:, Timedtext talk:
- Module:, Module talk:
The virtual namespaces are:
In any given namespace there can only be one page with a particular name.
To see a list of all of the pages in a namespace (the main namespace has 6,913,985 articles, plus millions of disambiguation pages and redirects), click on Special pages in the toolbox menu on the left side-bar of your screen. At the top of the list that appears is the entry All pages. Click on that, and a pull down menu (to select a namespace) and a search box for entering a starting pagename appears. The namespace listing will start at whatever spelling you place in the searchbox.
To get a list of only pages starting with a particular string of characters, click on All pages with prefix instead.
To access these pages by link, use [[Special:AllPages]] and [[Special:PrefixIndex]].
The article Wikipedia:Plain and simple is a summary that explains the basics of what you need to know to start editing quickly and avoid major stumbling blocks. Don't worry if you don't understand everything at first. As time goes on, you'll learn how to be a great contributor to Wikipedia!
If you do get stuck, there are volunteers available to answer your questions, see asking for help for more information.
Discovering that pages need basic copyediting may surprise new visitors to Wikipedia. This is because the encyclopedia is a dynamic work in progress, published while it is being developed and updated in real time by people all over the world. Millions of the articles need simple improvements. You don't have to be an expert to edit Wikipedia. Just click the edit tab at the top of the page and start typing away!
Copyediting involves the "five Cs": making the article clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent. So, if you see something you can fix, click on the "edit" tab at the top of the page, and start typing in the edit window to fix it. Be bold. And, if there are any facts you know about the subject that are missing, then please, add them in!
For general help with editing, see Wikipedia:How to edit a page.
If you need to know what an acronym or initialism stands for, see Wikipedia's List of acronyms!
If you're looking specifically for Wikipedia abbreviations, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia abbreviations and Wikipedia:Edit summary legend.
The Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist setting in your preferences improves the display of the Special:Recent changes page, by grouping recent changes per day by article, and displaying the titles of the changed articles in order from newest to oldest change. This feature also applies to Related Changes and your watchlist. This only works with browsers that support Javascript (but all of the latest versions of all of the major browsers do).
To activate this setting, do the following:
Click the Preferences link at the top of the page. Then click the Recent changes tab. Then check the box next to Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist. Then click the Save button.
Note: After saving, you have to bypass your browser's cache to see the changes. Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), IE: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5.
The most important non-talk namespaces have one or more centralized pages (or entry points) from which a user can find their way around more easily. These pages link to the most important pages, which in turn eventually lead, in an evolving organized way to the rest of the pages in the namespace. Here are the entry points for the namespaces which have them (note that a namespace's entry points can reside on other namespaces):
- Main namespace: Main Page, List of basic topics, List of topic lists, all Portals (see Portal:Browse), the entire category system (see Category:Contents and Wikipedia:Browse), Wikipedia:Browse by overview, and Wikipedia:Quick index.
- Wikipedia namespace: Wikipedia:Community Portal, Help:Contents, Wikipedia:Department directory, Wikipedia:Shortcuts.
- Help namespace: Help:Contents
Have you run across a problem that requires the attention of an Administrator?
The fastest way to catch the attention of administrators in general is to post an alert to the Administrators' noticeboard (A.N.). Administrators go there all the time to see what is up with Wikipedia; one of them will see your message and will take immediate appropriate action. Experienced editors hang out there too and sometimes will answer a question before an Admin gets to it.
Another option is to paste a {{admin help}} template (with the four curly braces) along with your question on to your Talk page and an Admin will stop by shortly.